The SuperSonic Swordsman
by Semor1539
Summary: Wyatt Watson is a boy who is excited for Sword Art Online. How will he react to the revelation that it is a death game? Will he survive? This is the story of his experiences in the death game known as Sword Art Online DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN SWORD ART ONLINE! I only own Wyatt Wattson the main protagonist of this fanfiction.
1. Chapter 1: Death Game

I slowly opened my eyes after waking to the sound of the birds chirping outside my bedroom window. I got up and stretched my arms out in relief. I got up and saw myself in my closet door mirror. I had medium length of unkempt hair and brown eyes. I looked at my arm and saw the large burn mark that I had gotten all those years ago.

*Flashback*

I was 8 years old and in my parents' lab looking at all the cool instruments they had for there work as scientists.

"Hey Wyatt, come here! I have something to show you!" My father called out from the other side of the room. I walked over to see what he was showing me.

"This here container is filled with hydrochloric acid, one of the strongest acids. We use it for many things! Here let me show you something cool!" He then took a sample of hydrochloric acid in a beaker and started to add a substance to it when all of a sudden, everything started to seem to move. My stomach felt really weird as I was trying to figure out what was happening.

I quickly concluded that it was an earthquake. I started to panic and hid under a sturdy looking table.

"Honey! Are you Okay!" My dad yelled across the lab to where my mother was. "Yes! I'm doing fine so far! Is Wyatt okay?" She replied. My dad was about to answer when the earthquake got much worse. A metal beam came crashing down and trapped my dad next to the canister of hydrochloric acid. The Metal beam also struck the hydrochloric acid causing it to spill all over my dad. "AAARRGGHH" He yelled in pain. With the absence of the metal beam holding the roof up the roof collapsed down on us too. I was hit on my head from the table splitting in two from the pressure and everything went black.

I woke up a little bit later and the room was filled with smoke. It seemed something had caught on fire. I tried to get up but found that my leg was caught under a piece of the roof. I did everything I could to get loose but could not seem to be able to. The room was now filled with so much smoke it was very hard to breathe. I laid my body against the ground and lay there in vain.

I then saw my mother come through some of the wreckage and she spoke, "Wyatt!! Are you okay!!" She then proceeded to come over to me and try to help release me from the rubble. I then noticed that there was another beam about to fall on her from the weak structure. However, I was too weak to say anything and just watched in horror as my mother was hit from the beam and started to bleed out. I started to cry in sadness at my moms' death and lost consciousness once again.

When I woke up this time I was in a hospital bed and was aching in extreme pain. I looked down at myself and saw that my arm was blistered and seemed to be burned. I assumed that I was burned from the fire. I then remembered what happened to my mother and father and started to cry again. Eventually, a nurse came into the hospital room and started to treat my wounds more. "I'm so sorry to break this news to you but both of your parents perished in the accident in the lab from the earthquake." I honestly was not that shocked because I already kind of expected this to happen from what I saw happen to them. I started to cry again and eventually cried myself to sleep.

*Flashback end*

I was now fifteen and had moved in with my brother who was a professional at kendo and had his own kendo school! He was much older than me at the age of thirty right now. Today was Saturday and a special day for me. It was the day a much-awaited game called Sword Art Online came out. It was for a new game console called the Nerve Gear which was a new VR game console that completely immersed the user into the game via microwaves sent to the brain toggling and simulating certain senses. Only ten thousand copies were going to be sold the first day and I was determined to get one.

I rushed to the game store and saw there was already a huge line to get one even though the store doesn't open for another 5 hours. I was very excited about this game because it was a game where I would be able to use my actual real-life sword fighting skills to good use. I spend a lot of time at my brothers' kendo school as I think that it is really cool. I have been practicing ever since I moved in with my brother which was for about 7 or 8 years, so I am pretty confident in my fighting skills.

After waiting the 5 hours and more for the actual line I was finally able to get myself a copy of sword art online. I rushed home and was incredibly excited to get on the game. I first went to my brother though to tell him that I would be playing for a while. He said it was fine because he had to teach the class anyway so he wouldn't be needing me for anything.

I ran up to my room and changed into more comfortable clothes. I also ate a small sandwich because I didn't want to get hungry while playing. I turned on the nerve gear and put the sword art online game cartridge in. I then put on the Nerve Gear and said the magic words.

"Link Start!"

I was then transported to the fantastic world of sword art online. After creating my character I was asked for a name. I decided that I would just put my regular name Wyatt because it doesn't really matter that much.

I spawned in a city area called the town of beginnings. I know this because it says it when you enter or spawn in the area. I had already researched the game a lot and knew that I should probably go out to the wilds and level up my skills.

I exited the town and went to a nearby wild boar. I took out the starter sword you spawn with and charged at the boar. My sword then started glowing as the sword skill that I had heard so much about activated. The sword skill slashed through the boar and made a red mark appear on its skin. The health bar went down to about halfway. The boar then charged at me which I sidestepped but got knicked from its tusk bringing my health down to 90%. It gave me a little experience and a couple of items such as a boar tusk and boar skin. I then went to the next boar and repeated the action but without getting hit. I continued this action for a little bit until I leveled up.

A notice appeared stating I had leveled up and can distribute 3 stat points to my stats. I then went to my start screen and my current stats were like this

Agility - 1

Strength - 1

Vitality - 1

Luck - 1

I checked what each stat does and they are as follows.

Agility determines the speed of the player

Strength determines the raw strength of the player and calculates the base damage of their attacks

Vitality Determines the health and defense of the player as well as their stamina and overall fitness.

Luck determines the chance of getting rare drops and other things that happen by chance while also affecting how strong the effect of buffs are.

I decided to put 2 into agility and 1 into luck so my stats were now,

Agility - 3

Strength - 1

Vitality - 1

Luck - 2

I then checked my skills tab to see how my skills leveled up through fighting and they were as follows

Acrobatics - 15/1000

Hiding - 4/1000

Searching - 9/1000

Sneaking - 12/1000

Sprint - 14/1000

Battle healing - 7/1000

One-handed sword - 17/1000

Apparently, there were supposed to be an almost unlimited amount of skills but you need to unlock them by doing something, for example, you would get the cooking skill by cooking for the first time in the game.

I was just about to continue my grinding but saw the time and realized it was getting pretty late. I then went to settings in search of the log out button. Weirdly I couldn't find it. I kept looking around thinking that it may be in some other weird spot for something but I still couldn't find it. I was just about to go back to town to try to get help but I was teleported there instead.

I looked around and saw that everyone was getting teleported here too. Oh! I bet that there is some kind of announcement that we are not supposed to miss so the log out button would not be available until the announcement was over! All of a sudden hexagons appeared all around the plaza and what seemed like blood started leaking from the top. In front of us, a cloaked figure appeared and started speaking.

"Hello! I am Akihiko Kayaba, the creator of this game! Now as some of you may have noticed the logout button has disappeared from your settings tab. This is not a malfunction but a feature of this game. This game will now be a prison to you all which can only be escaped by beating the hundredth-floor boss at the end of the game. You will also no longer respawn in the game and will instead have your brain fried from microwave radiation from the nerve gear if you die in the game. I also have a small present for you all. Look in your inventory. With that, I will say goodbye until the hundredth floor." Everyone looked in their inventory and found a mirror. As everyone took it out they were transformed into there real-world selves. For a second everything was quiet. Then everything exploded into chaos. People were yelling and running all over the place.

After panicking a bit myself I composed myself and decided that I should go to the next town because it would be less populated over there and I would have an easier time farming over there because there would be less competition. I summoned the floor map and set a route for the next town. I quickly left town on my way to the next town. On my way out of the city, I stopped at a small NPC store and sold all of the drops I got from the Boars I farmed earlier. I used the col I got to buy better a better sword. I replaced my shoddy Shortsword with a Storm Forged Longblade. It did almost double the damage as my shoddy sword did 4 damage my new Storm Forged Longblade does 7. I also bought some leather bracers(2 Defense) as well as a leather chest piece(4 Defense) which gave me a total of six defense. I used the rest of my col to buy 5 health potions just in case something happens on the way to the next town.

With my shopping done I continued to the next town where I fought tons of monsters on the way. I ended up leveling up again putting all three of my stat points into agility. Making my stats

Agility - 6

Strength - 1

Vitality - 1

Luck - 2

I would probably need to upgrade my strength next because my sword is near the maximum weight I can use without drastically impeding on my speed.

I reached the next town and was very tired as it was like 2:00 in the morning as it was already pretty late when the announcement was made. I reached the next town called Horunka village. I decided to stay at an inn there because I was super tired.

After paying for a room I lay down on the bed in my room and started thinking about my situation. I need to survive this. I need to so I can see my brother again. With that said I needed sleep and went to bed.


	2. Chapter 2: Realization

"Oow!" I said in pain as I fell off my bed during my sleep! I then looked at the clock in my inventory and saw that it was already 10:00 in the morning.

" Wow, I woke up late! It must have been because I went to bed so early last night." I reasoned to myself.

I decided to get everything ready for the day by changing my comfortable clothes out for my normal gear. I then went outside to see that the few people who were in this town right now we're in much sadness.

"I guess they are starting to really feel the burden of being trapped in the game," said someone behind me.

I looked back and saw an older woman looking at me. "I'm surprised that you don't seem to be that shocked. I know I am." Said the woman. "You know... its never good to keep your feelings inside for too long, so I wouldn't judge if you started bawling right now."

"No... It's not that I'm keeping my feelings inside. It's just that I know that crying about it is not going to make it any better." I responded. "I just feel like there are better things I could be doing."

With that, I left the woman and exited the town. On my way out I stopped by a couple of NPCs to accept some quests. The two that I found were to kill 30 Frenzy Boars and to find a rare herb that is dropped by a Weeping Flowerpot. Both of those were relatively easy to do as they both spawned in the plains right outside the town.

I exited the town gate and instantly saw a group of Frenzy boars that I could kill. There was about 6 of them but they are one of the weakest enemies, so I didn't think I would have too much of a problem. I then proceeded to sneak behind one of the boars and used a sword skill to slash it from behind. This did extra damage because it was a sneak attack. The Boar died from the attack but the rest of the boars noticed me and charged. I simply sliced in front of me, timing it just right so all of the boars collided with it a full speed which did critical damage. They scattered from the attack but quickly regrouped. I charged at them, this time, and activated my sword skill and completed a combo called horizontal square. This killed most of the boars but the rest were quickly dispatched from my next attacks.

After my encounter with the boars, I had miraculously not gotten hit once so I had no reason to heal. I continued my quest through the field and fought multiple groups of Boar. the second to last group I got lucky on because they were accompanied by the enemy that dropped the herb I needed for the other quest. Unfortunately, it didn't drop the item I was looking for so that was kind of a bummer. However, I had leveled up again from fighting so much. I decided to put 2 points into agility and 1 into strength. Unlike some players, I loved to be fast in games. It made the combat much more fun and intense but also made it much easier to deal with situations. After my level up my stats were now these:

Agility - 8

Strength - 2

Vitality - 1

Luck - 2

With this level up, I was now level 4 and considering that it was only the second day of the game that was pretty good. However from what I have heard, after level 5 the levels start getting harder and harder little by little to achieve as they start needing a lot more experience.

I headed back to the village getting the rare herb on the way, so I could cash in the quest. After cashing in the quests they gave me a little bit of Cor and the herb one gave me a new sword. The new sword was called a Blood Infused Broadsword. Kind of a creepy name if you ask me but whatever because it does the same amount of damage, but had a bleeding debuff effect which apparently drained its health slowly over time.

With my quests completed, I decided that I should have a little bit of fun! I wanted to start working on a personal skill that was simply for comfort or entertainment. The skill I decided to work on is Tailoring. I don't know why, but I think it would be cool to be able to make a cool cloak that goes over my armor or something. So I should work on my tailoring skill.

I then traveled back to the town of beginnings so I could go and buy a pair of scissors and a needle and thread to start working on tailoring. The store I arrived at sold an entire tailoring kit for 1000 col, so I bought it.

I followed the instructions in the guidebook the beta players were giving out and clicked on the scissors. This opened up a menu which had a few options for things I could make. I decided on a small bandana. Then I had to decide what material I would make it out of. I decided to use some premium Frenzy boar fur. It was much softer than regular Boar fur and was a lot lighter too. I took out the piece of cloth and proceded to cut the cloth in a few places seemingly at random. The fur then shone a bright white light and transformed into a nice bandana. Since I had no need for a bandana I would probably just give it away to some player in the town of beginnings.

After selling the bandana to a random player for 100 cor I decided to check my skills. They were as following.

Acrobatics - 25/1000

Hiding - 13/1000

Searching - 20/1000

Tailoring - 5/1000

Sneaking - 24/1000

Sprint - 22/1000

Battle healing - 16/1000

One-handed Sword - 32/1000

This means that each time you make a piece of clothes your tailoring skill goes up a fair amount.

I continued to tailor for the rest of the day and even leveled up from the experience I was getting from making all the clothes. I put my stat points into 2 agility and 1 vitality, and my tailoring skill increased to 35 So my stats were,

Agility - 10

Strength - 2

Vitality - 2

Luck - 2

From this point on though, it was going to be much harder to level up.

Out of all the pieces of clothing that I made, the one I liked the most was this cloak I made out of a premium dire wolf pelt. It was very soft and comfortable and kept the heat just around my natural body temperature. Out of all the items I made this is the only one I decided to keep. (think of the cloak that Asuna had on in the anime, at the beginning. However, it is gray and much more nice.)

I put on my cloak and tossed the hood down because it restricted my vision slightly and that was something that I didn't want to have to deal with. I decided then, that I would stop with the tailoring for now and go back to grinding monsters in the wild.

\--Time skip--Seven Days--

It had been 7 Days since I took my little relaxation period before really starting to play the game. I had only leveled twice since then because like it was said to be, it became much harder to level after level 5. After my week of grinding, my new stats were these,

Level 7

Agility - 13

Strength - 3

Vitality - 2

Luck - 4

Acrobatics - 56/1000

Hiding - 28/1000

Searching - 44/1000

Tailoring - 35/1000

Sneaking - 53/1000

Sprint - 66/1000

Battle healing - 27/1000

One-handed Sword - 74/1000

Parry - 22/1000

I was determined to get to level ten because I had heard that once you reach level ten a new quest unlocks that is called Secret Medicine Of The Forest. It was supposed to give you a really powerful sword called the Anneal blade.

Since in the past week I had not explored much to the north, where the 2nd biggest town was supposed to be so I decided that I should probably head that direction next. The next town was called Tolbana town.

I then set off on my way to Tolbana town. The way there was pretty peaceful beside the occasional kobold attacks. "Kobolds have been appearing more frequently the more towards the north I get. Hmm... I wonder why." I thought to myself. By the time I got to Tolbana town I was at around 65% health and was very tired. Due to my fatigue, I failed to notice a group of players hiding behind some crates and other miscellaneous items.

The minute I stepped into their field of vision I was grabbed on both arms and pulled into a nearby alleyway.

"You! Give us all of your money and items and we won't hurt you!" The biggest one said.

"Is this an attempt at mugging me? If so then sorry but you guys picked the wrong person to mess with" I responded angrily.

The second I felt his grip shift on my shoulder, I hit the joints on his arm collapsing his arm and bringing his entire body slightly down. I then raised my knee and kneed him right in the face. Since we were in a safe zone it didn't seem to bring his HP down but it still looked like it hurt. Even if there are pain nullifiers on this game.

He released me from his grasp and clutched his nose in pain. I took this chance to quickly do a spinning midair helicopter kick sort of thing to his other two lackeys and dash off at full speed using my high agility to run without them being able to follow me.

"I guess all those martial arts lessons my brother made me do really paid off! Even if the only one I truly wanted to do was his kendo class." I said to myself.

I went to an inn and rented a room for five days for a few hundred Cor. I went to my room and instantly collapsed on the bed, tired from the events of the day with all the traveling and almost getting mugged. With the memories of the days' events floating through my head, I fell into a nice dreamless sleep.


	3. Chapter 3: The Northern Dungeon Road

Chapter 3

*Chirp Chirp* Is the first sound I heard as I slowly woke up from my dreamless sleep. At first, I thought that something bad was happening but then I realized that it was just the chirp of the birds. As I stretched my legs I wondered what I was going to do today. I was thinking that I should explore a bit to the far north, but first I should look around this town. I had developed quite a bit of money in my week of grinding so I decided I could spend some money today. I haven't upgraded my armor since near the beginning of the game so I decided that I should probably shop around to get some new armor.

As I left the inn that would be my home for the next few days I looked around the town to look for someplace that might have some nice armor. If I could find any player run shops that would probably be better because NPC shops usually have gear that is around the level of the last area. However, player run shops usually have gear that is dependant on the player who runs its blacksmith level. This means you could buy something that is way higher level than the area your in if the player who makes it level is high enough.

As I walked around the town I looked at all the different shops and read their names aloud.

"Tim's food court, Delgado's, Yukihiras, Shokugeki house… They all seem to be restaurants!?" As I walked around town I couldn't find much of anything besides food courts and I was starting to get a little annoyed. The closest I got to an armor store is this clothing store run by this weird lady who for some reason undresses all the time, which is odd especially since it was a clothing store.

As I went into the main square where all the simple shopping stands were I saw what I needed. There was a big dark-skinned guy that was selling armor and weapons to players. He also sold some ingredients, potions, and other miscellaneous items. I walked up to his stand and started

A conversation.

"Hey there! I'm Agil! What can I do for you today?" The man called Agil said.

"Hi! I'm Wyatt. I'm in the market for some good armor. Price isn't a problem so just give the best you have." I responded.

"Uh… Okay. But I have to say I don't have many materials to make armor and even though my blacksmithing skill is pretty high I won't be able to give you much better than what you already have. However, if you were able to get me some nice materials I might be able to make you something worthwhile." He said.

"Hmm… that might work but I need to know what materials you need?" I asked him.

"If you can get some Starbronze and Chronohide I could probably make you some of my best works. Although I doubt you could find some. They are incredibly rare drops from the Boar of Time miniboss. He has only been beaten a few times and the materials are still rare drops from him. If you insist on getting them he can be found to the far north at the bottom of the dungeon on the edge of the floor. There's a bit of parkour to get there too which might be a bit troublesome." He explained.

With that, I left town and started on my way to the north. The way there was pretty cold and wasn't peaceful at all. I was constantly bombarded by kobolds. It is weird how many kobolds there are. On the bright side, I was able to level up again from all the kobolds. By the time I got to the dungeon my stats were:

Level 8

Agility - 15

Strength - 3

Vitality - 2

Luck - 5

Acrobatics - 67/1000

Hiding - 28/1000

Searching - 44/1000

Tailoring - 35/1000

Sneaking - 59/1000

Sprint - 97/1000

One-handed Sword - 120/1000

Parry - 44/1000

"Whew! I'm Tired!" I said aloud.

My health was currently at 53% and I decided to take a rest outside of the dungeon. As I was sitting down I decided to look in my information guide to see what else the boss drops. It said that it drops a variety of items but the materials I needed were only a 20% chance of dropping. However, it also has a chance of dropping a bunch of other items. However, it has only been beaten a handful of times and there are probably a lot of other items that can be dropped.

After waiting a while my health regenerated to full health and I started into the dungeon.

One problem

There was a parkour course to get to the dungeon. Knowing this game, if you fail the parkour you probably die. That's likely one of the reasons why it has only been beaten a few times. As I started the parkour I couldn't help but wonder how hard the boss was going to be.

The first part of the parkour was an area where you are supposed to be crossing a chasm by swinging across it on these wooden beams shooting out from a wall, sort of like monkey bars. However, with my large speed stat, I was able to cross the chasm by wall-running.

The next section was a classic jumping from platform to platform. This was pretty easy for me as my acrobatics skill was decent for this point in the game.

Finally, the last section of the parkour was a giant wall that I had to climb. The catch was that it shot out lava at seemingly random intervals and locations.

After narrowly missing some of the lava spews, I reached the top of the wall.

In front of me was a huge door that had some cool looking symbols. I went up to the door and pushed on it slightly. A message popped up asking "Are you sure that you want to enter the dungeon? Yes. No." I clicked the yes button and the door swung open for me to enter.


	4. Chapter 4: Battle in the Dungeon

Chapter 4

Immediately after I stepped into the dungeon I was attacked. Around 6 Lizhards came running at me from the darkness. The first one swung his sword at me which I smoothly was able to duck. I drew my Sword and Swung upward chopping his outstretched arm off. I then jumped back as two more of them poked at me with spears. I then properly got into a fighting stance and rushed them. With a yell, I parried one of the strikes of a spear and performed a sword skill which chopped his head off. That Lizhard quickly shattered into polygons but another one came from behind them where my field of vision was blocked. It was the other lizhard with the spear and its spear stabbed at me with quite formidable speed.

As the spear stabbed at me I Hit the length of it with my sword and slid it down until I hit the Lizhard chopping it in half. After killing that one I jumped back again to prepare myself for another attack. I jumped back just in time because another 2 Lizhards came from the side and would have chopped me in half with battle axes if I had not jumped back. I dashed forward and stabbed one with my sword and while jumping on him and then pushing off of him as if he were a stepping stone for me. The final Lizhard was then chopped straight down the middle by my sword as the entire weight of me came down upon him in the sword as I delivered my downward areal strike.

The First lizhard that I fought and regrouped with the other one while I was fighting the others and was now holding his sword with his other hand that had not been chopped off. He was standing next to the last Lizhard who also wielded a sword. I dashed at them both and exchanged a couple blows with their swords before eventually finishing them off too with a quick slice to the legs, immobilizing them, then a chop to the heads.

Out of breath after the battle, I took out a health potion that regenerated my health and wiped the sweat off of my forehead. After resting for a second I got ready to continue my trek through the dungeon. I continued through the dungeon and had a few run-ins with other monsters too. Eventually, I reached a big chasm that almost glowed with mysterious energy.

"I have a bad feeling about this," I said to myself excerpting a famous movie.

With a rumble, a tremendous boar came trampling out of the darkness. It had dark wisps of energy coming off of it and almost seemed to be rotting alive. Everything around it also seemed to be affected by this rotting curse. It was almost like the boar from Princess Mononoke. As soon as it saw me, it charged at me releasing a screeching roar. I responded to its attack by sidestepping it and bringing my sword in an upward arc. I hit the boar and did some damage. I looked at its health bar and it had 3 health bars and I had done about 1/10 of the damage for the initial health bar.

Stepping back from the boar I readied my sword for a sword skill combo. I ran at the boar and slid under its belly when it threw its tusks up. I did 3 horizontal slashes on its belly as I skimmed under it. I then stood up turning around on the other side of it. I continued my assault with one horizontal slash, then a slanted upward slash. Which shifted my weight up allowing me to spring up above it and deliver a stabbing blow into its back which I then dragged along its back until I reached its head where I shifted my grip and slashed at its eyes.

The boar roared in pain as it thrashed around. It swung its tusk at me which I blocked with my sword but still hurt and decreased my health a fair amount. I stepped back and looked at its health bars. It was one and a quarter health bar down. I prepared myself for its next attack.

It assailed at me slashing its tusks up and down and side to side. I quickly brought my sword forward in a circle in front of me and chopped at its tusks. It reared back and thrashed about in pain. I watched its health bars and it dropped down quite a considerable amount. "Looks like the tusks are a weak spot." I thought. I rushed in once more and readied my next sword skill. I stooped down below its tusks and made an arc above my head, slashing at the base of the tusk. I then delivered a series of attacks to its face while it was vulnerable from mu attack to its tusk. I dodged its strike and fell back to see its health bar. It was now at about 1 health bar left. Just at that moment it started to roar again and started to morph into something. This was its second stage. The purple wisps of energy around it started to get sucked back into its body. Its tusks regrew and were ow surrounded by purple energy. The boar charged at me and I tried to parry the tusks but it just blasted my sword away and I was hit right on by the tusks. I watched as my health drained from in the mid-green to the low yellow range. If I was hit by another one of those I'm a goner, so I should probably not get hit again. I dashed back into battle and used my high agilityto elude its attacks.

I started to do a sort of hit and run tactic that allowed me to drain its health slowly but surely while being much safer than just running in there. As I continued the battle I got nicked a couple of times and my health had now drained into the red. This boss was probably supposed to be challenged in a party but since I have been soloing so far it's much harder to beat for someone like me. Eventually, I was able to get it to its last fragment of health and prepared my final attack.

I activated my sword skill and rushed in to deliver the final blow. I hastened at the demon boar and jumped up, bringing my sword up in a reverse grip ready to stab down on the boar. I bring my sword down putting all of my strength into it and bring the boars head to the ground. For a second the head of the hog was limp on the terrain but soon after it shattered into polygons.

A succinct menu appeared having the results of the battle on it. I had earned a decent amount of cor and got quite enough experience from it. As if on queue a notification appeared above the menu stating I leveled up. After dismissing the notification I looked back at the battle results and looked to see if I got the items I needed. Sure enough, I was lucky enough to get a decent amount of both the ingredients I needed.

I looked through the rest of the things I got. Some of them included boar tusks, premium boar meat, and essence of cursed a cursed being. However, one item that caught my eye was a key. I hovered over it and read the description of the item.

Key Of the Boar

*Rewarded by beating the cursed boar miniboss in under 15 minutes.*

This key is a special key that unlocks a secret door in the chamber of the boar that leads to a room with a randomized sword.

*Only Rewarded Once Per Player*

I took the key out of my inventory and put it in my hand. I looked at the key for a moment before realizing what this meant.

"Wait… This wasn't on any of the info brokers information about the boss which means this item has only ever been rewarded to me!"

After thinking about the key for a second I started to look for the door. Sure enough in the back of the chasm, there was a small stone door that blended into the wall. I stepped up to the door and got equipped for whatever was waiting for me inside.

I reached out and slid the key into the small slot on the door and unlocked it. I gradually pushed on the door and opened it revealing what was inside.


	5. Chapter 5: Aranunth

Chapter 5

As I walked into the room I noticed several things. One thing was that the dark energy that filled the room was no longer there. The second thing was that This new room seemed to be very ancient making it seem like it was from some lost civilization in the lore of SAO. Finally, the last and most important thing was that In the middle of the room there was an ancient pedestal with a gleaming sword sticking out of it.

I went up to the sword and inspected it looking for any clue of what it was. It had runes on the length of the sword and the handle was made out of some kind of leather. I slowly walked up to the sword and looked at it a bit closer. The sword seemed to be made out of some unknown metal and didn't seem to have any of the same visual properties that I have seen in any other metals.

Looking at the whole picture of the sword and the pedestal it was stuck into, it looked sort of like the sword in the stone. Thinking about it for a second, I decided that I should try to take the sword out.

I reached my hands out and grabbed the hilt of the sword. It was a rough handle that oddly felt kind of nice. It allowed me to grip the sword quite easily. I gripped harder on the sword and prepared to try and lift the sword out of the pedestal. I flexed my arms and pushed up expecting the sword to be budged in there but, it easily just slipped out and was lifted out of the pedestal. I held the sword high in the air and looked at it gleaming in my hand. All of a sudden a message appeared in front of me saying,

"Congratulations! You have acquired Anarúth! This sword is a one of a kind sword rewarded to the first player to unlock any of the secret rooms throughout aincrad. It is one of several words that may be found at certain places throughout aincrad."

After reading the notice, I opened my inventory to read the description of the sword which was as follows:

Anarúth:Unique sword rewarded in the Cursed Boar Dungeon. Was the sword of a past king in a lost civilization from before aincrad. Forged in the forge of Hephaestus himself made from an alloy of both Mythril and Adamantine, making it unbreakable. Blessed by the gods with the ability of "Soul of the Enemy" which allows the sword to absorb the power of the enemies it kills and converts it into its power, meaning that killing enemies levels up to the sword.

Level: 1

Range: Close range

Type: Slash

Attack: 100 (Lv 1)

Durability: Unbreakable

Weight: 70

After reading through the description of the sword I lifted the sword and inspected it. "So... It levels up by sucking the souls of the enemies it defeats. Also, it already does 100 damage which is a pretty decent amount for the first floor. I'll have to ask Agil more about it when I get back." I thought to myself.

Then I remembered that there was supposed to be some sort of tablet that I was supposed to inspect. I looked around the room and saw a small inscription on a stone slab in the back of the room. I walked over to it and raised my hand on to it to dust it off. When I touched it a message popped up asking if I wanted to inspect it. I selected yes and waited for it to do something.

After a second another message popped up and said: "You have cleared the Northern Boar dungeon, here are your rewards." It then proceeded to give enough experience to level me up twice, and also gave me 10,000 cor. Happy with this reward I started to make my way out of the dungeon. I had also remembered what I originally came here for and remembered that I should go to Agil so he can make my armor.

After leaving the dungeon and getting to a safe place I went to allocate my stat points from my two level-ups.

My stats were now as following

Level 10

Agility - 16

Strength - 8

Vitality - 2

Luck - 5

Acrobatics - 80/1000

Hiding - 28/1000

Searching - 44/1000

Tailoring - 35/1000

Sneaking - 59/1000

Sprint - 110/1000

One-handed Sword - 140/1000

Parry - 60/1000

Satisfied with my level I started my journey back to town.

Once I got back the first thing I did was go back to Agil to place my custom order.

"Hey, Wyatt! You got the stuff I needed?" He asked when I walked up.

"Yup. I got both the Chronohide and the Starbronze. I also got a special reward that I would like to ask you about."

"Huh... So you unlocked a secret room that had this sword in it?" he asked, double-checking what he heard.

"That's what happened," I responded.

"May I see the sword?" He asked.

"Uh, sure..." I said while giving him the sword.

He looked at the sword for a second the held it up and gave it a swing.

"This is a mighty fine sword you have here. Stronger than anything I have seen. Could I perhaps Sharpen it a bit for you? It seems like it is a bit dull from sitting there so long." He said.

"Sure, if you want but I also need you to remember to make my armor," I said.

"Ah... right, I almost forgot about that."

With that, he got to work and both sharpened my sword and made me my armor. The armor he made me was the Armaments of a Starry Night set. It was a black cloak that had over double the defense that my current armor did. I put it on and looked at myself.

"You look quite imposing in that. Makes you look like some kind of medieval swordsman.

"Ya It makes me look pretty cool don't you think?" I said looking at my self in approval.

After getting all my gear together I went back to the inn that I rented and got situated for another night. Before bed, I went out into town again and stopped at one of the many restaurants. The one I stopped at was this place called Yukihiras and it had probably some of the best food I have ever eaten. Like seriously it was amazing.

Finally, after eating my delicious dinner I went back to the inn and got ready for bed. However, It was very hard to sleep when certain sounds were coming from the next room. Either way, I eventually fell asleep and had a dream that was not very pleasant to think about. I certainly did NOT want to imagine what the two in the next room were doing but unfortunately, my dream was of just that.

Ugg.


	6. Chapter 6: Becoming a Blacksmith

Chapter 6

The next morning I woke up from a night of very disturbed sleep. As sleepy as I was I knew that I should probably get going for the day. I figured that the next thing I should do is probably get some kind of shield. The only thing was that I like to be fast and most shields slow you down because of the extra weight. However, if I could get one with some kind of speed boost that would be awesome.

Eventually, after eating breakfast, I went out into the town square and started to go to Agils shop.

"Hey there Wyatt! What can I do for you today!" He said in a friendly tone because I had started to become one of his regulars.

"I'm in the market for a shield now. Do you think you could help." I ask.

"Sure! I'm adept at making shields, but I don't know if I could make something that you would want. You seem to be a player that focuses on speed and if you were to want a shield that wouldn't slow you down I'm probably not the right guy to ask for that because I focus more on making heavy shields that provide a lot of defense." He said.

"Ah... Okay, I see. Thanks for your help though." I said waving goodbye.

I started to try to think of a way I could get a good shield but I couldn't think of anything much.

Then it hit me. I could make my shield. If I were to do that I could have it exactly as I want.

The thing was that I would have to learn how to smith things.

The first thing I should do is figure out how smithing works. From what I have heard is that they have public smithing areas in some towns and that you can smith with what they have there. However, if you were to want to make some really good items, you would have to use special personal anvils and smithing tools.

For now, I would settle for making it at the public place but in the future, I might want to look into getting my smithing station.

The first thing I thought to do is to buy some kind of guidebook of how to smith. I knew some players were selling them for a bit of money so I just had to ask around.

After getting a smithing guidebook and looking through it a bit, I figured out the first thing I would need is a good material to make it out of. Luckily I had just the right thing. When I killed the Cursed boar it dropped many things including some metal called aegis bars. The description for them was that it was a sturdy but light metal that gives a speed boost to anything you make with it.

The second thing I needed to do was find a place to make the shield. I found this public player setup where they had a small smithing station you could use for a bit of money.

I walked up to the guy running the place and asked if I could rent a station. After paying and getting the station I walked into the small booth and picked up both the Aegis metal and a smithing hammer that was provided with the smithing booth.

I followed what the guidebook said to do and made a small shield out of some of the metal. After looking at the stats of the shield I put it back in my inventory to sell it to someone later because it kind of sucked. Looks like your smithing level is super important in this kind of stuff.

I decided to use a bunch of the other metals that I had no use for to make random items just to increase my smithing level.

After a few hours, my smithing level had increased a fair amount and I had countless random assortments of items. Not wanting to waste the last of my Aegis Bars I made a shield out of some random ore to see if the quality had increased at all. Unfortunately, the stats of the shield were still way below what I needed them to be. Even worse I couldn't take any more items because I had used the last of my ore on that test shield. All I had left was the Aegis Bars.

After spending the entire day trying to make a decent shield I just kind of gave up and went back to my room at the inn to think.

I came up with two ideas to increase my smithing skill. One I could just grind smithing out to increase my level. Two I could open up my shop and try to make some money while helping people out. I decided on the second option. If you think about it, it's not such a bad idea. I can spend the next few weeks smithing to make money and level up. Not to mention having a high smithing skill will probably be incredibly useful late game.

With that settled, I went to sleep thinking about how I would set up my shop.

The next morning I was up and at it very early in the morning. After sleeping on it I started to get very excited about my idea. I was looking around town to try and find a good place to set up a shop when I found the perfect location. It was a small area next to a tree by the amphitheater. Deciding that I was going to set up shop there I started looking at buying my blacksmithing station.

After buying a blacksmithing station and everything else I might need for a decent price (that still put a dent in my funds) I returned to my location and set up shop. I decided that I would run a shop that specializes in special orders that customers put in.

That morning my first customer came in.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for a battle-ax that I can use to fight the higher-level areas in this area."

After getting his order and creating his weapon in the fly as I had no other things to attend to I sold the weapon to him and made a decent amount of money.

I found it quite fun to blacksmith in this game and figured I would be doing this for quite a while.


	7. Chapter 7: The Boss Meeting

Chapter 7:

It was now three months since the start of the death game. I had been running my blacksmithing gig for a couple of months now and had made some pretty good money off of it. About one month ago I was able to make my shield which was a simple Aegis shield. It suited me well because it had a strength boost that made up for the added weight and lowered speed. My new sword Anaruth had not been used much as I had spent most of my time inside the town running my blacksmithing shop.

I had built a simple house on the edge of town using the building system the game has. It takes a while and a lot of resources but you can eventually make some decent buildings. They are nowhere near as nice as the ones you can buy, of course, but they are also not nearly as expensive.

Anyways, even though I had not fought that much I had still leveled up a few times from blacksmithing. I wasn't the highest level player but was still a pretty high ranking player easily being on the assault team which was currently looking for the boss room.

As I was a high ranking player, I was invited to a meeting that the assault team was having here in Tolbana. The meeting was in a few hours so I had to close up shop here pretty soon.

I had upgraded my armor just a bit since opening up shop. I was now sporting the same Armor of a Starry Knight set but with a few changes. I had a black fur cloak that surrounded most of my body. It had black fur shoulders and was silky smooth to the touch. It had a nice hood that was thin and light but very warm and was able to retain my body heat very well.

On the inside, I had a black scale male that was made of the chronohide combined with some star bronze, making it as light and soft as the chronohide but as protective as the star bronze. One thing I had added was these scales that added a little bit of defense but made the inside look very detailed and very appealing to the eye.

Unlike some sword users in the game, I opted for the classic leather sheath on my belt. The sheath had uneven straps of leather on it that gave it an almost old and medieval feel. The sword on the inside was my Anaruth which I would probably keep for much of the game as it can upgrade with me when it levels up from killing enemies. It currently did more damage than any other sword I had seen in the game. Even more than the anneal blade which was known for being the strongest sword on the first floor doing 80 damage.

Its appearance was of a long blade that had ancient runes on the blade along with intricate designs that Swirled around the blade. Also whenever I killed an enemy, The runes would glow a dark red that was almost vampiric. The crossguard on it was a simple shining metal that looked quite regal when properly looked at. The handle of the sword was a simple black grip that was made out of some sort of ancient beast hide. It wasn't rough or scratchy but quite nice to touch. It provided a good grip and was quite nice to use.

On my back was the aegis shield. It seemed to be some kind of skin, possibly goat, as it felt and looked like it. But it was made out of a unique material called Aegis bars that only have a 2% chance form dropping from bosses with fur. It had a depiction of medusa on the front and was quite frightening if looked at closely.

My stats were also now

Level 17

Agility - 22

Strength - 12

Vitality - 6

Luck - 11

Acrobatics - 86/1000

Searching - 87/1000

Tailoring - 67/1000

Sneaking - 88/1000

Sprint - 123/1000

One-handed Sword - 152/1000

Parry - 64/1000

Blacksmithing - 231/1000

I looked at the time and saw that it was about time to go. I then packed up all the things I needed to bring with me and restocked some of my potions and crystals. The meeting location they gave me was inside the amphitheater which was quite a familiar area for me because that is where my old stall used to be.

I continued my walk to the amphitheater and started to think about is the situation again. "2000 people have already died… And were not even off the first floor yet! I do hope they find the floor boss soon.

As I reached the amphitheater I heard some yelling next to the entrance. It seemed like some person was trying to get into the meeting but one of his friends was holding him back.

"Let me go! I want to help too! If no one steps up to help get us out of here we will all just end up dying in here!" The one that was trying to get in said.

"But brother! If you join the assault team there is a high likely chance that you will die! If you die I will be all alone when we get back into the real world!" The other one said.

"But if I don't join we might not even get to see the real world again. Don't you understand." The first one said.

I decided I should probably break up this small fight so I steppe in.

"Hey, you there. I know you're worried about your brother, but it won't hurt to at least let him come into the meeting. Besides if he does end up joining the rest of us will keep him safe." I said.

With that, he calmed down a bit and let his brother go.

"Hey, what's your name? Mines Teeposer5000… I know the stupid name, but I wasn't expecting to be in a death game. So you can just call me T." He said.

"Mines Wyatt. Nice to meet ya. You seem like a nice guy. Do you want to sit by me during the meeting?" I asked him.

"Sure!"

With that, we headed inside the amphitheater where there were around twenty people were already sitting down.

I sat down in a space with T and waited for the meeting to start.

After a few more people arrived, a man with blue hair walked up to the center of the amphitheater.

"Hello! Welcome to our first official meeting of the assault team. My name is Diavel and the job I chose in this game was a knight." He stated proudly, starting this meeting off with a light tone.

I and T both sweatdropped as everyone around us started laughing.

"Dude there isn't a job system in this game!" Someone said.

After the laughing died down Diavel continued with his speech.

"Alright settle down everyone. Now its time to get serious. To start with, today I and my party found the boss room at the top of the floor Labrinth." He said in a serious tone earning some gasps from some of the audience members.

"First, we have to beat the boss and make it to floor two. Next, we have to tell everyone in town that it IS possible to beat this game. Fact is, it's our duty as the most capable players here. Do you all agree?" He said in an authoritative tone. This earned a few claps from the audience.

"Now, let's figure out how we are going to beat the boss. First off, we'll team up into parties of five or six. A typical party doesn't stand a chance against a floor boss. We need a strong raid group made up of multiple parties." He said.

With this everyone started splitting off into different groups. I decided to just stick with T and see if we could find another group with fewer people in it. I saw a group of this boy and a girl in the corner of the amphitheater and made a mental note to ask if I could join their part after the meeting.

"Alright! Now that everybody teamed up - Hold up a sec!" Someone said interrupting Diavel in the middle of his sentence. Then some guy with weird orange hair jumped down from near the top of the amphitheater.

"My names Kibou got that! Before we take on the boss, I wanna get something off my chest." He said. "We all know of the 2000 people who died so far, ya? Well, some of you need to apologize at them right now!" He said in a demanding tone.

"I mean you, ex beta-testers! The day this game started the beta-testers just up and vanished to go and take all the good hunting spots and the easy quests." He said. "This whole time they just treated us as if we're nothing. I even bet there are some of them here! We should make them apologize to us and give us all there money and items! They can't expect the party to trust them when they don't trust us." He finished.

After a second, a voice I recognized spoke up.

"Can I say somethin'?" a husky voice said. Then from out of the crowd Agil got up and walked up to the center of the amphitheater. "Hey, I'm Agil. Kibou right? Well, let me make sure we're on the same page… You think that the ex-beta testers should be blamed for the rookie's deaths because they didn't help them. And you want them to apologize and give up their winnings. I leave anything out?" He said.

"No, you didn't," Kibou responded.

"The item store hands these out for free… Its a guidebook, you got one, didn't you? You know who was handing these out… The ex-beta testers." He said. "Listen up. Everyone had equal access to this information. Even so, lots of players died. I'm not here to point fingers at anyone, but instead to learn from their mistakes. However, even more importantly, I'm here to figure out how we're gonna beat the boss." He finished.

With that, they both went back to their seats and Diavel continued his speech.

"Okay… Can we get back to the meeting now?" He said. "For info on the boss, its all in the guidebook you just heard about. According to the book, the bosses name is Ilfang The Kobold lord. Also, he'll be surrounded by his minions, the Ilfang Kobold Sentinals. His main weapon is an ax and he has four health bars. But when his last one turns red he switches to a curved weapon called a Talwar and his attacks switch too… That's it for the debriefing. As for loot distribution, all the loot will be distributed equally and whichever group kills the boss, gets the Exp, and whoever gets an item gets to keep it. Does that sound fair? Good! We leave tomorrow at ten in the morning. Meeting adjourned people!" He finished.

With that, the crowd dispersed and everyone went there separate ways. I and T then went looking for that group of two that we saw earlier. We eventually found them but they seemed to be having a serious conversation while eating bread, so we didn't want to bother them. I said my goodbyes to T and went back to my shop that doubled as my home. I saw the gear that T was using and decided that I should make him something to help out during the boss fight.

After making some gear for him I went to my bed exhausted from the events of today and fell into sleep easily so I could get a good nights rest for the next day which would stand to be one of the most important days.

AU: Whew that chapter was longer than I expected. Wanted to get this scene done today. Either way, I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter.


	8. Chapter 8: Before the Battle

Chapter 8:

It was the morning after the day of the meeting where we made a plan to beat the first-floor boss. I had gotten a message through the messaging system from Diavel who friended everyone who was joining the battle. It was describing our plan that we were going to use to fight the floor boss. We planned to assign each party with a different task. The first few parties were tasked with actually fighting and damaging the final boss. The last few were then tasked with guarding the attackers against Kobold Sentinals that would attack them from all sides. Our team was one of the ones who was going to fend off the minions. This worked out great because from what I could tell, the other small team was also on the defending duty.

I decided to go to T to see if he was ready to go to fight the boss. I had just finished eating breakfast and went out to find him. After looking in a few places I ran into him under a big tree in the middle of Tolbana. I went up to him to ask if he was ready to go.

"Hey T! You ready to go? It is about time for us to get going to the boss raid." I said.

After a second he answered in a shaky voice. "I… I don't know about this. I've been thinking about what my brother said and I think I have decided not to join the boss raid. I'm sorry… But I don't think I'm ready to put my life on the line. When it came to talking about it I was so sure of myself, but now that it comes down to it I'm not sure if I'm willing to risk leaving my brother all alone."

After thinking for a second I said, " … That's okay… I kind of understand. It's not that you don't want to help… It's just that you don't want to take the risk that might harm your brother. If you don't want to join me that'll be okay." I said sadly. In truth, I was kind of annoyed that he was leaving because I had been planning for him to be my partner. Especially if I wasn't able to join up with those other two.

"Thanks a lot… I'm glad you understand. I do feel kind of bad for leaving you though." He said as if he could read my mind.

"No problem. It's not a problem. I can just find some other group." I said even though I weren't completely convinced of my words.

After saying our last goodbyes I left him and started to make my way towards the boss room. On my way out of town, I bought all the supplies that I needed for the battle. I bought Health potions and teleport crystals if we needed to flee. I also bought a variety of other healing crystals to heal me when I got a status debuff. I doubted that the kobolds would inflict any type on my but it wouldn't hurt to be extra careful.

After buying my stuff I started to head to the labyrinth which was a huge dungeon that had been found when I was running my blacksmith shop. It was in a similar location to the boar dungeon but instead of being to the northeast of Tolbana it was to the NorthWest. On the way there I got in a few encounters and my sword even leveled up for the first time. Its new item pop-up said,

Anarúth:Unique sword rewarded in the Cursed Boar Dungeon. Was the sword of a past king in a lost civilization from before aincrad. Forged in the forge of Hephaestus himself made from an alloy of both Mythril and Adamantine, making it unbreakable. Blessed by the gods with the ability of "Soul of the Enemy" which allows the sword to absorb the power of the enemies it kills and converts it into its power, meaning that killing enemies levels up to the sword.

Level: 2

Range: Close range

Type: Slash

Attack: 125 (Lv 2)

Durability: Unbreakable

Weight: 70

Instead of doing 100 damage now, it did 125. It took a while to level up so I guess that It will probably last me a long time.

Eventually, I finished my small trek to the floor 1 Labyrinth and met up with the group. After looking for a bit I eventually found the two characters from before and decided to start a conversation with them.

"Excuse me, sir?" I said to the young man about my age.

"Yes?" He answered simply.

"I'm so very sorry but the rest of my group backed out of fighting the boss so I am currently solo. Would you mind if I could join your guyses party?" I said not mentioning that my old party only consisted of one other person.

"Uh, I guess, but just so you know we are both just Sentinal clearers." He said.

"That's fine. My group was one too." I said truthfully.

"Cool! Well, I guess your part of the team now! My names Kirito. What's yours?" He said friendly.

"I'm Wyatt. It's nice to meet you kirito." I said returning the friendliness.

We had been walking in the dungeon with the others for a while now and had had a pretty rough time with the monsters. Because there were so many players in one area the spawn rate was heightened much more than usual. This meant there were tons of enemies that we had to fend off. However, eventually, we reached the end of the labyrinth and stopped in a large room to take a rest.

After everyone healed their health and let the cooldown timers wear off Diavel spoke up.

"Alright people! This is it! This is the moment we have been waiting for! It's about time we showed the rest of the people that it IS possible to beat this game! We have waited about 3 months for this so let's not skrew it up! Remember the plan! Teams A through D attack the boss while teams E through G Fend of the sentinels and other servant enemies. Once it switches to its other weapon the attackers change their strategy to accommodate for the change in attack patterns. Now if your all ready, let's GO!!" He said passionately.

With that he reached his arms out and pushed on the door to the boss room opening it, revealing the dangers that awaited inside.

**Authors Note: Sorry for the shorter chapter today but I didn't have much time to write this as I wrote it after finishing my work in my Tech class. Hope you enjoy though!**


	9. Chapter 9: Ilfang the Kobold Lord

Chapter 9:

As we walked into the room we instantly knew this was going to be a hard battle. The minute one of us walked in, we heard a loud battle cry coming from what seemed to be the floor boss. We all looked at the boss and 4 health bars appeared above its head. As the epic boss music started playing from some unknown location we all got into our formation.

I, Kirito, and the girl who I still yet to learn her name all grouped and got to defending off the Kobold sentinels.

"Arrg!" Kirito said as he slashed at the first kobold sentinal. "Wyatt switch with me!" He said.

"Ok!" I responded as I switched with him and came speeding into the kobold sentinal. The game had a sort of physics system that kept everything in check and one of the things it did was make everything obey newtons 3 laws. Bow as the 2nd law is Force is equal to mass*acceleration you could hit something fast to deal more damage. This is why when I came speeding at the kobold sentinal and hit it full on it instantly killed it and did much more damage than what my sword says it does.

After killing a couple more we turned our attention to the other teams to see how they are doing. They seemed to be doing fine as, as far as we could tell, there were no casualties yet. We then looked at the boss' health bar and saw that it was only a little over a quarter done with the first health bar.

I was the first one to turn back to our task at hand and saw that there was a kobold sentinal that was about to slash at kirito who was not looking towards our current fight at the moment. Reacting faster than I usually do I pushed off the ground towards kirito and slashed at the kobold who was about to attack him. Unfortunately, I didn't time it quite right. I certainly did kill it but I also got hit in the process. This brand my health to just in the yellow zone. I got up from the ground that I was smacked against just in time to hear kirito say, "Wyatt! Are you okay!?"

"Ugg. Ya, I think so. Dang, I thought the pain nullifiers in this game were supposed to be pretty high, but that still hurt like heck." I said wincing.

I took out a health potion and drank it as quickly as I could. It increased my health to just below the max but gave me a debuff which prevented me from drinking a health potion for another minute.

Turning my attention to the growing horde of kobolds that kirito and the girl were fighting I got into a fighting stance and rushed at them. The first one I met with I used my sword to chop off its arm and then swung it in an arc that chopped off its head all while still running. The next one swung a weapon at me so I stepped to the side and spun in a circle swinging my sword around me cutting him at his waist. I continued running towards kirito and the last one I met along the path swung an ax at me which I ducked and avoided while chopping off its legs because I was low to the ground. I then jumped up and sliced diagonally at its head killing it while flying over it towards kirito.

When I reached kirito I started helping him out with the enemies he was dealing with by switching back and forth with him to gain momentum on each enemy and end it with a couple swift, decisive blows. After killing the last one that had spawned in that area I looked back at the boss to see that they had finished its first health bar and were moving on to its second. I looked around to see the other girl in our group being almost overwhelmed by a horde of kobolds. I and kirito rushed over to her and simultaneously cut down 2 kobolds on each side of her.

"Hey, are you okay?" I asked her.

"Ya, I'm fine…" She said quietly.

The contempt with that I looked around to see if any other groups needed help. There was this one kid who seemed like he wasn't doing so well against this bigger kobold so I ran over to help him. I jumped at the kobold from the side and swatted away his hand with the flat of my sword and then did a horizontal square sword skill that killed him. Red particles had then been absorbed from the polygons that erupted from him as did with every enemy that I killed with this sword.

Not taking the time to talk to him as we were in the middle of a boss battle I rushed away from him to the next kobold which I sliced at in a triangular pattern. Taking out a few more on my way back to the group I noticed that the groups attacking the actual boss were almost on the last health bar of the boss. As I got back to Kirito I yelled to him "Hey kirito! How many more do you think there are!?"

"Well, the boss is spawning them so technically speaking I think there might be an infinite number of them that could spawn. That is until the boss is defeated of course." He responded intelligently.

"Heh.. good point. Guess that would be the case wouldn't it." I responded sheepishly.

With that, we got back to the battle and became whirlwinds of death to all kobolds who dared come into contact with us. That isn't to say that we didn't get hit at all. By the time that we finished the horde that we were fighting in this section of the boss room, we were both at around 50-60% health.

We then turned our attention to the boss attackers who were about to get the boss down to its last quarter of health where it would switch weapons and attack patterns. Finally, a player landed the hit that turned its health to red.

With an angry look in its eyes, it reached back and put away its current weapon that it had been using and took out a… Nodachi weapon? At that moment Diavel, the leader of the group rushed in to try and kill it.

"Wait! Stop Diavel! That's a Nodachi! Not a…" He said but stopped as Diavel showed ignorance towards his words.as Diavel got closer, the long reach of the Nodachi allowed the boss to do an unexpected katana skill that hit Diavel right in the chest, sending him flying through the room.

Kirito then ran over to him to give him a potion but to my surprise as Kirito started to give him the potion Diavel held his hand back. They both started muttering to each other and were saying something that no one could hear. Closing his eyes, Diavel shattered into the polygons that have haunted everyone in this world for the past three months.

Kirito stood up and had a determined look in his eyes and yelled out, "Wyatt! Asuna! Let's finish this!"

Understanding what he meant we both nodded our heads in agreement. I was the first one to run at the boss and deliver a few blows. With my high damaging sword and high speed I came at it with I did considerable damage. I only had a little above half health so I could not get hit because If I got hit I would probably die. The first attack it threw was another katana skill that I jumped over and pushed off against the blade of the oversized katana that allowed me to jump up towards his face which I did three slashes against in the small amount of time I had to hit him. As I fell back to the ground, I yelled at Kirito, "Kirito! Switch!"

Ready for me to say that He immediately switched with me and delivered his blows. Showing a large amount of skill he landed some really good attacks in on the Kobold Lord which swung his katana at him in rage. During the time that he was fighting, I took the chance to gulp down my strongest health potion.

Finally, Kirito yelled out to Asuna, "Switch!"

Asuna then darted into the fray of the battle with her rapier sword. She did a good combo but then the Kobold lord did a move that Asuna looked like she got hit with. A split second later though she came into view and was unhurt from the attack. The only thing is that she wasn't wearing her cloak that covered her face anymore. Instead, she revealed the girl who she really was. Her long flowing chestnut hair was beautiful but that is beside the point. Once again she switched with kirito who got a few good hits in until something unprecedented happened. After he hit a good hit on the Kobold lord his arm was flailed upwards leaving his chest wide open. His eyes widened as the Nodachi the Kobold lord was using hit him in the chest sending him flying towards us.

He rammed into both of us taking down a small amount of health but with our already low health, both I and Asuna were both in the yellow while kirito was in the red. The Kobold lord came speeding over to us and seemed as if it were going to smash us with the katana if Agil had not stepped in to save us by blocking the katana strike.

"Remember, you're not the only ones in this boss battle." He said.

As he said that all of the rest of the players rushed in and started fighting him. Giving us a second to catch our breath, Kirito let out a battle cry and rushed into the fray and delivered a series of devastating blows that seemed to be the ones that would finish it off. He did an upward strike and a downward one and a sword skill combo and another sword skill combo until he delivered the fatal blow that put an end to the life of the kobold lord

After a second of silence, everyone started yelling and cheering as loud as they possibly could. They had defeated the boss. They had done it. For a second I started to get dizzy with happiness as I realized that it was possible to leave this game. I might get to see my brother again. The cheering raged on until someone interrupted it with an angry voice.

"Stop! Why are you cheering him on! He doesn't deserve your cheers! Do you all remember that Diavel died!! It was all his fault! He knew the boss was going to use a different sword. He let Diavel die! I bet he was a beta tester! Stupid beta testers!" Kibou said angrily.

After a second of silence, Kirito did something very dramatic. He said something very unpredictable.

"Don't even compare me to those noobs you call beta testers. Most of them are just noobs who barely even know how to play the game. You see, I did know about the skills the nodachi had. However, that is because unlike those noobs I got to higher floors than anyone else had and on those high floors I fought enemies way harder than that boss that knew those skills." He said dramatically.

"No… Your not a beta tester… Your just a dirty cheater! Ya! A cheater. You're a… a Beater! Ya, that's what you are!" He said almost scared.

"Ya, I like that… Beater… That's what I am now, a Beater." He said while equipping a dark and menacing cloak that fit his actions.

With that, he went on to see what the next floor was. However, as he was exiting the boss room Asuna went up to ask him something.

"Wait!" She said.

"Yes?" Kirito asked her.

"How… How did you know what my name was… I don't think I ever told it to you." She asked.

"Up in the corner of your screen, there is a little icon that says the name and health of all your party members." He said simply as he dissolved our party.

"What about you Wyatt, did you know about this?" She asked looking towards me.

"Uh… No actually, I just picked up your name from hearing Kirito say it." I responded.

After the little exchange, Kirito turned around and left the room emotionlessly. I knew he was just trying to take the hatred off of the beta testers but I still didn't like how he was doing it. Taking on all the hatred himself!? That can't be healthy. Plus it's kind of obvious if you have a bit more information.

After thinking about what he did for a second, I followed the rest of the group out of the boss room.

AU: Wow this was my longest chapter yet. I'm going to try to keep them around 1000 or 2000 words but I might go a bit higher occasionally if I feel like I need to continue the chapter for a bit longer. Well, hope you enjoyed.


	10. Chapter 10: Martial Arts Quest Part 1

Chapter 10:

It had been a week since the first boss fight and since then many people had migrated to the 2nd floor. With almost double space now, people were much more evenly spread out. There were still a large number of people who are cooping themselves up inside the town of beginnings on the first floor but when we beat the first boss we proved to everybody that it was possible to get out of this game. Now at least a third of the people who were cooped up in the town of beginnings were out and about on the first or even second floor.

Currently, I was exploring a section of the 2nd floor that had not been explored much. The second floor consisted of a couple of large savannas and a moderate mountainous biome. The background music that played over almost everything was much more somber on this floor and focused on an oboe most of the time, giving the floor a kind of nostalgic feel. Not happy nostalgic but a sad remembrance nostalgic even though there was nothing to remember.

The area I was exploring was a specific mountain in the mountainous zone that seemed to be the highest mountain. At first glance, there didn't seem to be anything interesting about it besides it being huge and tiring to climb. However, I had a feeling that there was probably some kind of secret on this mountain. After all, they wouldn't just make this mountain for no reason, right?

I kept my eyes peeled for anything interesting as I trudged up the mountain. So far I didn't seem to find anything too out of the ordinary besides the occasional animal that I didn't recognize. Since nothing caught my eye I started to reflect on what had happened in the last week. First of all, I sold my small shop to Agil who was happy to turn it into his shop for the time being. I didn't require it anymore since I was now helping out on the frontlines with this new floor. I had leveled up quite a few times since before the boss battle. From the boss battle alone I leveled up and got halfway through my next level. Then after the constant exploration of the new floor I leveled up a couple more times too. My stats were now,

Level 20

Agility - 25

Strength - 15

Vitality - 7

Luck - 13

Acrobatics - 114/1000

Searching - 130/1000

Tailoring - 67/1000

Sneaking - 110/1000

Sprint - 157/1000

One-handed Sword - 217/1000

Parry - 119/1000

Blacksmithing - 231/1000

My sword had also leveled up once again from all my exploration and now had stats as following,

Anarúth:Unique sword rewarded in the Cursed Boar Dungeon. Was the sword of a past king in a lost civilization from before aincrad. Forged in the forge of Hephaestus himself made from an alloy of both Mythril and Adamantine, making it unbreakable. Blessed by the gods with the ability of "Soul of the Enemy" which allows the sword to absorb the power of the enemies it kills and converts it into its power, meaning that killing enemies levels up the sword.

Level: 3

Range: Close range

Type: Slash

Attack: 150 (Lv 3)

Durability: Unbreakable

Weight: 70

I had gotten used to the sword since I had gotten it and now it felt as natural as a kendo stick to me. Another thing that happened is that I had seen kirito once again in my time exploring. He was surprised I saw through his charade so easily and said that he should take some acting lessons to make it less obvious.

I was still in the middle of my thoughts when I saw what I was here for. I was near the top of the mountain and I had seen a small hut in a small grove next to the side of a cliff. I knew that there had to be something special there so I went started walking over to see what this place was. As I got nearer to the house I noticed that he had a few poles that I recognized were for practicing martial arts. They had different mechanisms on them that moved when you hit them. (Think of the things they use to train with, in kung fu panda). We had used them occasionally at my brothers' martial arts school.

I got to the door of the house and gave 3 firm knocks on the door. I was answered by an old man who seemed to be an NPC.

"Hello there, young whippersnapper. What brings you up to a remote place like these mountains." He said referring to the mountainous terrain were in.

"I was exploring the area and saw the house here and came to ask what someone is doing living up here," I answered respectfully.

"Well to answer your question, I am just an old man who enjoys the smell of nature. Is there any more that I need to say about that?" He said.

"No that completely suffices," I answered. "However, I am wondering what those training dummies outside are for," I said.

"Ah… Those are just relics of my past. You see I used to be a master martial artist. You know I could even teach you if you want." He said.

"Really? That would be cool." I said thinking back to my brothers' martial arts school once again.

"However, I must warn you that it will be a difficult path. Do you still accept?" He asked.

Realizing that this must be a quest I answered, "Yes I understand and promise that I will be strong until the end."

"Good now follow me." He said gesturing for me to follow him.

I followed him out into the back of his house and out into his garden. He led me to a training pole thing and gestured for me to hit it.

"I want you to hit this thing 1000 times. Also, make sure you don't get hurt by the spinning arms and legs. They move when you hit them. Currently, you have a basic punch and kick skill. I want you to use those. Unless of course, you can throw good attacks without them." He said.

After hearing what he had to say I threw a kick at the pole and when I kicked it the other side came around and hit me in my arm, taking out a small part of my health. Getting ready to strike again I redied my other hand to hit it when it comes around so it would be equal power striking against each other and stop it from moving. I executed the two punches and my plan succeeded. Smirking, I continued to punch and kick the pole for about an hour.

By the end of the thousand strikes, I was exhausted but still determined to finish this quest.

"Good. Now I know you are determined to finish this. Now its time for the real task. Follow me." He says.

Following him, We walked for what seemed like forever through the mountains until we came to a large rock.

"I want you to break this rock without using any weapon or other means of damaging form you besides your hands. Therefore the only thing you can use to destroy it is your hands." He said.

For a second I waited for him to say the "Just kidding" part but he never did.

"Oh and one more thing" He running over to me as fast as that old fragile body could run, "Until you finish this task you shall have whiskers on your cheeks, so if you decide to quit halfway through you shall have these whiskers forever." He said as he moved faster than I thought possible from his body and put whiskers on my face with a magic paintbrush.

I looked at the rock once again and sweatdropped. "It can't be that hard… can it!?" I said to myself.

I activated a simple punch skill and punched the rock. I looked at the health bar of it and saw that it had not visibly gone down at all. I sighed, "This is gonna be a long day…"


	11. Chapter 11: Martial Arts Quest Part 2

Chapter 11:

It had been around 7 hours since I started to hit the boulder. It was getting very tiring and I wasn't getting anywhere with it. I was only around done with the boulder and I was only getting more tired and much weaker. I started to get frustrated with myself and mumbled to myself under my breath, "Oh come on. How much longer is this gonna take… There has to be some kind of trick to it." I looked around helplessly looking for some kind of trick that would allow me to end this mission quicker. I understood that he was going to give me some intense things to do but this!? This is just ridiculous.

I continued to attack the boulder every couple of seconds. Even though this was a virtual world they had still programmed feelings and fatigue into the game, and right now I was feeling the most fatigue I had ever felt in this game. I kept wondering what I had to do to be able to finish this quest when I heard a sound in the distance. It seemed to be some kind of roar coming from far off in the woods. Thinking that I was just tired and ready for sleep I settled down in the area which was unpopulated so I had a low likelihood of getting attacked in my sleep.

In the morning I woke up a little later than usual so I would have extra energy to use against the rock. I got to hit the rock early in the morning and continued to hit it for the next few hours. In those few hours nothing of significance really happened, however, a couple of things did happen. Whether or not they are of importance is debatable but they surely did happen. The first thing that happened was that I heard that same roar that I heard yesterday again. The second thing s that the old man came back to check on me.

By now I had gotten the rick down to around 3 quartes of its total health. At this rate, it would take a few days to finish off this rock. I had to figure out a way that I could use to beat this faster because I could be doing more productive things right now, such as actually exploring the new floor we were on.

As I was thinking to myself It happened again. A couple more roars. Deciding that I had enough time to go and see what the roars were coming from I left my little rock area and went in search of the source of the sound.

Following the general direction that the sound was coming from I saw a few things. The area around this new location seemed to be slightly tussled up and a little bit destroyed. This could mean a couple of things. One thing is that there have already been players who have come through here or that there was some kind of beast that was destroying the landscape.

I continued on and heard the roar a couple more times. Now I was getting really curious about what the sound was. It sounded kind of like some kind of cow. Not a domestic cow but a giant wild cow that eats everything. It was really quite a peculiar sound.

As I entered a clearing after traveling roughly half a mile or so away from the rock I found my answer to what was making the sound. There was a herd of trembling oxen that were all in the clearing. I wondered why there were so many of them as they are not usually found in this kind of masses and especially not all the way up the mountain. Then it hit me. It was like getting hit in the face by a tennis racket that someone was using a sword skill on. I felt so stupid that I hadn't realized it before. I could abuse the physics system to destroy the boulder. I could ride on an animal, in this case, the oxen, and have them run at the boulder which I hit with my hand, so I am technically hitting it with the palm of my hand but with the force of entire oxen charge in it.

After realizing this I started to formulate a plan in my head. I could lure one of the trembling oxen away from the others and sneak on to its back which would send it into panic and start running. I would then use my sword on each side of it to steer it towards the rock and once I get close enough I hit the rock with the full force of the ox through my hand.

I immediately set my plan into action, excited to finally finish this stupid quest. After mounting and steering the ox towards the stone, I prepared my attack. I reached behind me and timed it just right so… BAM! I hit the rick with the full force of both the ox and me. This brung its health down about another quarter which was more than I could do in an entire day.

After hitting the boulder another couple times it finally got destroyed. I jumped off the ox and looked smugly at the remains of the boulder.

After waiting a couple of seconds I went back to the house to inform the old man of my achievement. However just as I was leaving he came out from behind a tree and revealed that he had been watching the entire time. He said that I was very clever with the way that I defeated his seemingly impossible quest. He also said that to be that clever is a key trait that someone should have and that in itself showed that I was worthy of his secret technique.

"Now that you have completed my task, it is time for me to teach you my sacred skill." He said. "Put your hand up to my hand."

I did as he said and put my hand up to his hand.

"Now yell as loud and hard as you can!" He said while starting to yell himself.

I slowly started raising my voice and was very weirded out by the awkwardness of the situation. Eventually, if someone were to walk into the clearing all they would see is an old and young man both yelling at the top of there lungs. It would be very weird. After a few minutes of yelling the man stopped and told me to look in my skills tab. I did as he said and now had a martial arts skill. I tried to use it by acting as if I was using a sword skill but in my hands and feet. They glowed brightly and I felt that I could use freestyle skills as well as specific skills like karate chop or something. I thought that this could be incredibly useful as I already knew a few martial arts in real life which I could now use here.

I decided to test my new ability on a nearby rock to see how much it does compare to when I was hitting it without the martial arts skill. I Activated the skill And did a simple palm heel strike and to my surprise, it actually took the rock down a considerable amount. It would still take a while to break it but not nearly as long as with my bare hands. It seemed to do around a quarter of the damage I could do with my sword. That could be pretty useful in situations where you can't bring your sword up in time to strike or block. Instead of just taking the strike you could strike them back and stagger them causing them to give you enough time to avoid the attack.

Proud of myself for completing this hidden quest, I said goodbye to the old man and went back to town. I didn't have much to do, so I thought I might farm a bit. Maybe even explore more to try and find the boss dungeon.

AU: I don't know why this entire chapter is in bold. I write it in google docws then copy it over, and for some reason today It made it bold ans for some reason it doesn't let me change it back without completely rewritting the entire chapter.


	12. Chapter 12: The Dragon Quest Part 1

Chapter 12:

Floor 3: December 19, 2022

It had been a few weeks since I had beaten the rediculous Martial Arts quest. In that time we had beaten the second-floor boss with tons of throwing weapons as its crown was weak to throwing weapons. It was kind of funny how easily we beat it. We all just made or bought a bunch of throwing weapons and we all bombarded it with the throwing weapons. Even though the boss had 6 health bars, we were able to defeat it with much less trouble than the first-floor boss. Although for much of the battle we were at a disadvantage because we didn't know how it would attack. That changed when Argo informed us of the attack patterns though.

On this new floor was a very different forest than the forests on the floors we had been in before. this was because the forest was huge! Even the main town of the floor consisted of three giant trees. These giant trees were filled with floors of the town that acted as a city of sorts but inside a tree. Outside of the city was a massive forest that reached as far as the eye could see.

Over the short amount of time, I had been on this floor I had completed a variety of things. One thing is that I completed the Elf war campaign. I had seen that both Kirito and Asuna were both participating in the campaign but were still relatively far behind compared to me who have already finished the quest. I had leveled up quite a few times in the past while from both the boss battle, the farming that I did after getting Martial Arts, and the main floor quest. Now my stats were,

Level 27

Agility - 33

Strength - 20

Vitality - 8

Luck - 20

Acrobatics - 244/1000

Searching - 220/1000

Tailoring - 67/1000

Sneaking - 187/1000

Sprint - 278/1000

One-handed Sword - 365/1000

Parry - 198/1000

Blacksmithing - 231/1000

I had also leveled up my sword so its description was now,

Anarúth:Unique sword rewarded in the Cursed Boar Dungeon. Was the sword of a past king in a lost civilization from before aincrad. Forged in the forge of Hephaestus himself made from an alloy of both Mythril and Adamantine, making it unbreakable. Blessed by the gods with the ability of "Soul of the Enemy" which allows the sword to absorb the power of the enemies it kills and converts it into its power, meaning that killing enemies levels up the sword.

Level: 5

Range: Close range

Type: Slash

Attack: 200 (Lv 5)

Durability: Unbreakable

Weight: 100

I was currently in a small inn, near the top of one of the big tree towns. I was overhearing a conversation about a very particular enemy that I was looking into. You see, My armor had become a little bit outdated as it was made on the first floor and we are now on the second floor. However, Instead of making a completely new armor set, why not just upgrade the armor I already have? To do that I would need to get the best materials, I could get so the armor would last a long time and I wouldn't have to upgrade it for a while.

This brings me back to this particular conversation. It was about a forest dragon who was supposed to spawn to the far west beyond the domain of the elves. It was supposed to be on a special mountain that was hidden among the deep forest. Only a couple of people had seen it but no one had ever defeated it. At least, not yet. This is because I planned on being the next person to beat it. The way people found it is actually because there is a quest nearby that requests you to slay the dragon to save their small village.

In this specific quest, the mayor of the town offers you a special material that can only be found by completing that quest along with few rare others on the higher floors. This material is known for being incredibly strong and overpowered for where you can get it. The name of it is called impure orichalcum. It is just a nerfed version of orichalcum that can be found on the topmost floors the beta testers got to.

I was listening to the conversation these people were having and it went something like this.

"Dude! That dragon is impossible to defeat! I tried getting near it and I almost died from only one of its attacks. I ran away from there as fast as I could!" One said.

"Dang… So you're pretty much saying even attempting to beat it is suicide?" His friend said.

"Pretty much…" The first one said.

"So how do you think that someone will be able to defeat it. I mean it has to be possible… Otherwise, kayaba wouldn't put it in the game! … Would he?" The second one said.

"I think that it probably has some kind of weakness somewhere. Like a single scale that inflicts like times ten damage whenever you hit it." Stranger 1 said. "That seems like how it would be supposed to be."

"Hey, did you hear about the girl who goes around with that big sword!" One said.

That was the point when I stopped listening and thought about what I should do. I started to clean up my area and went up to the front desk to end my stay at the inn.

After leaving the inn I started heading towards the town where the dragon was. According to the 2 people I eavesdropped on earlier, It was probably a very high-level boss and would be quite a hard fight. However, unlike them, I was already almost level thirty. This was higher than most players as the highest level player was probably just above thirty or somewhere around there. Since I was a much higher level than the two that I had seen earlier I would probably have a much easier time with the boss than them who almost got one-shotted.

After a few hours I was around the area the small village was supposed to be. I kept wandering around the forest until I came across A little fence that seemed to be supposed to keep the monsters out. Thinking that this was probably the village the quest was in I went over and jumped their little spiked fence.

After waking inwards for a little while after jumping the fence, I started to see other signs of a village. There was a small farming box that was sporting fresh tomatoes. I continued further until I eventually was standing in the middle of around half a dozen houses. There seemed to be a couple more a little ways away, but otherwise, it seemed like this was all there was in this little town.

After walking around a little bit I was called over by an elderly elf.

"Excuse me young man, but are you an adventurer?" He askes politely yet sternly.

"Yes, I suppose you could call me that. Do you need my help with anything?" I ask hoping that this was the quest I needed.

"Yes, I do have something I desire from you." The old man said. "You see, this town has long been attacked by monsters so we built the small spiked wall you probably saw on your way in. However, recently we haven't been getting attacked by many monsters. At first, we celebrated. Yet deep down we knew something was not right. It was only until about a week ago when we figured out what was wrong. You see, In the mountain to the north, there had been a dragon who slept eternally. That is what we thought anyway until it came down and attacked our village. We used to have around a dozen houses but after the attack, we only have 8. What I need from you, is for you to try and kill or scare away the dragon. I know this sounds like an outrageous task but if you are able enough to kill it please help our village. It rests on the same mountain that is used to sleep on but comes down every afternoon to get food. We haven't been attacked in a couple of days but we are afraid of its next strike. So please help us!" The man concluded.

Wanting to finish the quest I quickly accepted and even told him that I would be able to not just get it to stop attacking their village but also kill it. After accepting the quest I started to head to the north of the village for about a half an hour until I got to a tall mountain that stood above the forest. Knowing this was the place where the dragon was I prepared myself for battle and gathered my courage for the fight that lay ahead of me.


	13. Chapter 13: The Dragon Quest Part 2

Chapter 13:

I was at the foot of the mountain that would be the battleground for the battle to come. As I steeled my nerves, I started to wonder how hard this dragon was going to be. 'I hope it's not too hard,' I thought. If it turned out that it was out of my ability I would have a teleport crystal at the ready to teleport me out of there.

After thinking about the challenge in front of me, I started to make my way up the mountain. I hiked up the path that leads up the mountain. There were rocks of all sizes. Further away there were some boulders that surpassed even the size of the boulder that I had destroyed during my martial arts quest. The road itself was also very rocky and resulted in many instances where I had almost rolled my ankle or did something simple like that, that would hinder my performance in battle.

Soon after starting, the path started to turn to the side and entered a particularly steep part of the path. I lifted my foot to start to climb this steeper portion when I remembered something. I could use my martial arts skill to help fight against the dragon too. It may not do as much damage. However, it could still prove useful if per se I were to be in a situation where I needed to block the dragon with my sword. I could still get a few hits on it while I was blocking.

After finishing the steeper section of the path I entered a wide area. The huge boulder-like rocks that I had seen before on my trek up here were now much more common and seemed to be scattered around the field as if something destroyed an even bigger rock and sent shards around the area. Multiple fallen trees lay on the ground or the rocks, making giant sideways pillars that could be run-up.

Towards the end of the opening, there was a large cave that seemed to emanate strong energy. The air almost seemed to be humming with that energy. As I got closer to the cave the energy became stronger and stronger, until it seemed almost as if someone was hitting a bass drum in front of me and I was constantly being hit with the wave of energy.

Assuming this was where the dragon was I got into a ready stance. I had been quiet up until this point in fear of awakening something before I was ready. However, now that I was ready, I loudly yelled and activated a sword skill getting ready for an attack on whatever was going to come out of the cave. I was lucky that I was already in a fighting stance because if I had not been, I would have been killed on the spot, or at least badly hurt.

The dragon came flying out of the cave much faster than I could react. I barely had enough time to raise my sword to my left when it hit. Its scales skidded along the blade my sword which was the only thing holding it away from me and preventing it from grinding my skin to dust.

Using the power that my sword was hit with I pushed off against the dragon's body and jumped up onto a rock, right in time too, as the dragon unleashed a breath attack which burned the edges of the forest that was touching the clearing we were in. Checking my health bar quickly It had only taken off around 7% of my health, but taking into account that that was just a grazing blow that I was protected by, by my sword, it was quite a lot of damage.

Moving my attention back onto the beast, I charged at it and readied my sword for a strike. I used my shield to deflect an attack from its claws which created an opening for me to get my first attack in. My sword skill slashed at the dragon and to my great surprise, my sword just bounced off as if I were hitting an Iron shield. I braced myself for its attack which blew me away to hit a rock a little further away.

I stood up as quick as I could and jumped away onto a boulder which had a tree leaning on it. I climbed up the leaning trunk of the tree and got far enough away from it to look at what was going on. The dragon seemed to be purple and emanated low-frequency energy that could be felt almost as how low sounds are felt even if you can not hear them. It had three health bars, however, they were all covered in a light blue hue. I assumed that this meant that it was impenetrable at the particular moment.

Looking closer at the dragon, trying to figure out what I had to do to lower its shield I saw something important. It had an orange mark on its breast that seemed to be the source of the energy in the air. I concluded that I needed to destroy that first to start damaging the dragon itself. I used my martial arts skill to apply a skill to my feet that amplified its power. I used this extra power to jump up above the dragon and came down the side of it. I slashed at its face which made it rear back, even though it would probably do no damage. I hit the ground and went into a low crouch, shifting my weight to the front. I pushed off the ground once again and had a clear shot to the breast of the dragon. I readied my sword as I flew through the air and stabbed the marking with all my might. The marking started to crack around the edges and eventually burst into little polygons that floated up and around the dragon.

Just then, as if the entire weight of the world was slammed up against my cheek, the dragon got me with its claws for the first time. For a second, all I could think of was how I am going to treat tanks with a lot more respect now. The pain was unimaginable. Even with the pain nullifiers that nullified almost all of the pain, I still felt like I was being stretched as far as my body would let it go, then pressed up against the floor and held down with a 2-ton weight.

I flew across the battlefield and crossed easily 150 meters. I skidded on the ground a couple of times before landing completely on the ground, rolling another 20 meters. My body was now on autopilot as I couldn't fathom the pain I was feeling. The only thing I was able to think about was this thought.

"I have to get away."

And so I did.

I lay on the ground for a couple of seconds trying to comprehend what just happened. I glanced at my health bar to see that I was somewhere in the low reds. I didn't have enough time to see it though as a blast of heat came at me which I narrowly dodged. The heat from the fire seared my eyes, hindering my vision. I ran away from the dragon and kept running for quite a way away. Along the way, I drank a health potion which helped with my health a little bit since I was now just in the yellow. If I took another hit like that, I would surely die.

I looked back at the dragon to see that it had changed in a few ways. The first thing I noticed was that it had a new name. I guess I hadn't noticed it before since I was fighting it but it didn't have a name. Now, its name was "Yurondrogash The Dragon of the Dark Elves." the name seemed kind of fitting as the dragons physical features had changed slightly too. It was now surrounded by a dark magical aura that was very similar to the dark elves magic. The dark elves were the only thing so far that the players could find that didn't have magic. So their magic aura was pretty unique as it was the only one we had seen up until now.

The dragon had also changed in the fact that its behavior was much less composed and no much more feral and wild. It made sporadic movements that seemed to be unpredictable and without a pattern. Its eyes had an evil look in them that it did not have before. It seemed to want to kill everyone and everything it came across. No instead of specifically going after me, it just attacked everything. Even things that weren't even near me such as the trees.

The last thing that had changed about the dragon is that its health bars were now shining a brilliant gold that had no colored hue on it. I assumed this meant that it no longer had a shield that would prevent me from doing any damage.

I continued to dodge its attacks from a distance, careful not to be hit again. I waited until my health poisoning debuff that prevented me from taking any more regenerative items was finished, so I could take another health potion bringing me into the mid-green area. I could probably take another hit before having to retreat again.

I sprinted over to him as fast as I possibly could and readied my sword for a deadly stab. I was in front of him in less than a second and delivered my strike. Unlike the first time I attacked it, the sword sank deep into its flesh like a knife in butter. I delivered a few strikes as fast and hard as I could. My sword Anaruth created a pattern of multiple Xs that covered the side of his body. I kept thinking to myself that I wanted to go faster and pushed myself past my limits, going faster than I ever have before. I slashed patterns across his body and even used my martial arts to punch with my other hand using the weight of shield to amplify the attack.

After just a couple seconds I was able to cover most of its bodies in red marks that made it look like a cat had scratched all over him. I was going to continue my assault when it swiveled around at just the right moment that it knocked me back. It aimed at me and fired a breath attack at me faster than I could blink. I moved my shield in front of me which took most of the attack. The flames devastated the land around me and my shield was growing very hot to the touch. The flames were burning my feet and lower legs as the redirection of my shield were not quite enough to completely redirect it away from all the parts of my body. I attempted to shift my shield to a better position but the moment I moved it the flames blasted on the side that I had moved away from and seared my right arm. Deciding against moving it I kept it in the same place for the few seconds which felt like an eternity of the rest of the fire breath attack.

The flames subsided over a couple of seconds and left me with about half health and a smoking shield. Wisps of smoke rose up from my shield and as I looked at it for a second I knew that it was pretty badly damaged. Stepping away from the dragon I was hit with another claw attack which was thankfully blocked with my shield this time. This made it do significantly less damage but still bring me to the red as I was already low from the breath attack.

I used the force of the claw attack to push me away from the fight and to temporary safety. I looked at the dragons health bar and saw that it was nearing the last health bar. After drinking a potion I flew back into battle, striking the beast a few more times before jumping back cautiously, not wanting to be attacked again. As I jumped back I also drank a health potion which healed me enough to be able to take another full-on hit without dying. Right as I touched the ground the dragon roared an angry cry and started to give off immense amounts of energy. The energy exerted almost pushed me to the ground from the immense pressure I felt around me.

Once again the name of the dragon changed. This time to its final form. Its name now read. "Yurondrogash The True Supersonic Dragon of the Dark Elves."

Its dark magical aura started to grow in size and eventually turned to the color yellow too as if it was going super Sayan.

I closed its eyes for a second, before opening them and appearing before me with greater speed than I could have ever imagined. It swung around and bring its tail in a deadly arc in front of it hit me with my shield between it and me. The force of the attack was so much that it was able to destroy me shield which had been weakened by the other crazy attacks it had. The still smoking shield split in half and flew to each side of me. Wide-open for it to hit me I instantly bring my sword in front of me and sprinted forward with my arm still sort of open.

I was just in time as its claw attack had once again slashed at me, hitting the very spot I was in two seconds ago. Even so, my arm was still extended in that direction and got chopped off at the elbow by a particularly sharp part of the claw. Ignoring the pain in my left arm I rushed in and delivered strikes even faster than before.

The dragon sped about creating shockwaves behind it. However, I was still able to barely defend and counterattack against it. Hitting it every time it came in to attack me. My health slowly drained down from the force of the blows hitting my sword. Now I would surely die if I was hit again and I don't have enough time to drink a potion when the dragon is this fast. The dragon flashed in front of me and raised its claw once more to do its deadly claw attack. This was when I had an idea that I acted upon. I didn't move when the claw came down upon me and instead jumped up right before it hit, landing on his arm. I quickly ran up his arm and readied my most powerful sword skill to attack it.

I jumped at its face and performed the sword skill midair, chopping its face in multiple different places.

I fell back to the ground as the dragon let out a deep but shrill cry. The dragon fell over onto the ground with a thunderous boom and lay there for a moment. It then did something unexpected. It spoke to me.

"You who have passed this great trial of battle, I bestow upon you this skill unique only to he who slays the Supersonic dragon of the three great dragons. Even though many may come and battle this dragon, only when these conditions are met shall one be blessed with this sacred skill. The first condition is that they are the first one to ever beat the boss. The second being that they defeat the boss solo. This means that there is a chance that the skill may have not ever been found if a party would have attempted at killing me. Now, find the other three dragons of legend that are only available to you and beat them. Each gives a skill of their own to the player. Only when you beat all three will the true nature of the skill be revealed to you. Farewell, Great Warrior." It said before bursting into the famous shining polygons.

I stared for a moment, before dropping to my knees in the middle of the destruction our battle had caused.

**Authors Note:****Wow... I was not expecting this chapter to be this long. I honestly wasn't. This is by far the longest chapter with almost 3k words. I felt that this chapter needed to be a bit long though because there were many things that needed to be done to finish this little quest. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and please review if you can so I can try and improve my writing in any ways that you guys/girls prefer.**


	14. Chapter 14: The Dragon Quest, Final Part

Chapter 14

"Congratulations!!"

This is what appeared in front of my exhausted body. In front of me, there was a menu that had popped into existence. It was the battle results. It revealed that I had leveled up twice from the battle and listed the drops I got from the boss. I had received many items from the battle. These included the following: A crafting stone that would upgrade the quality of whatever I would add it to during its crafting or upgrading, a sword that I would have no use for at the moment, a few dragon scales and dragon talons, and of course, a last attack reward that was a ring named the "The First Dragons Ring of Speed". It seemed to be a ring that could be equipped and would give me some kind of buff. This particular ring would give me a 10 Speed buff. I guessed that the other 2 dragons of the 3 great dragons would give rings corresponding to their special stats. So their would probably also be a ring of vitality and strength.

I equipped the ring and noticed that I felt much faster from such a sudden dramatic change in stats. I had also gained a good amount of cor from the boss and had also gotten some potions and miscellaneous trading items.

I selected the dismiss button on the menu and was greeted with another menu. This one was much more interesting and significant. Its text read as, "Congratulations on meeting the special requirements of starting the 3 Dragons questline. The new unique questline's information will now be in your quest tab. Furthermore, for completing the first quest in it you have been rewarded with one of three special abilities that only you may unlock. This skill goes by the name of Sonic Boost. It allows the user to travel around the speed of sound for 10 seconds. However, the user is not able to travel over 1 kilometer away from the point at which it is activated and will disable with an extended recharge time if attempted to do so. After using the skill the cooldown before being able to use it again is 1 minute."

Amazed by the new ability, I dismissed the tab and tried to activate it. It activated like any other skill but once it activated, I felt completely different. That jump in speed I felt when I equipped the ring was nothing compared to this. This was on an entirely different level. I felt like I could teleport. I seemed to still be able to control my speed and go a normal speed if I wanted but I could also go faster than I thought possible. I pushed forward as hard as I could and sped up to faster than I thought possible. In an instant, I was on the other side of the battlefield.

It truly was amazing how fast I was able to go with this. In the end, the skill wore off and I would need to wait another minute to use it again. I realized that I didn't seem to have trouble overshooting anything when I go that fast. Considering that it would only take about three seconds to travel that kilometer I seemed to have extraordinary control over it. I wondered if this was on purpose and came with the ability.

Either way, I started to travel back down to the village that I got the quest from. Even after all that I hadn't forgotten that I needed to upgrade my armor. That was when I remembered that I had that upgrade stone. I wondered if I could use it to upgrade my armor too. Although I would only be able to use it on one piece of armor. I wondered if I could maybe use it on my sword instead. If that was even possible.

Eventually, I got back to the village and was rewarded for the quest. I had gotten the Impure Orichalcum that I needed for my armor. I had also gotten a reasonable amount of money too. My total cor was now around 500,000 which was enough to buy a small house in any major towns.

I then traveled back to the main tree city in the center of the floor to go and try to upgrade my armor. I figured that I should probably create a new shield since my old shield had broken during the fight against the dragon. I approached the gate of the town and was greeted with a sight of a young girl being crowded by other players. I walked over curious as to what was going on. There seemed to be a couple of guys harassing her.

"Hey, why don't you just get this all over with and give us all your loot right now. If you don't were going to have to hurt you." One said in a creepy voice.

"No stop! Please let me go! Help! Help!" the young girl shouted out in desperation.

Deciding to stop this, I put my hood over my head, hiding my face and activated Sonic Boost. I appeared in between the girl and the men and instantly used my martial arts skill to sweep the legs of the 3 men. I grabbed the waist of the girl and flashed away. I appeared about half a kilometer away and put the girl down.

"Wha!? What happened!" The girl asked in amazement.

"Don't worry. You're safe now. I took care of them. We are about half a mile away from them so if I were you I would get out of here as fast you can." I said as my ability wore off.

"Okay. Thank you, sir! May I ask how you did all that so fast and how you were able to get us an entire half a kilometer away in just an instant?" She asked in amazement.

"Well, that's a secret," I said playfully.

With that, I turned away from her and walked off towards another entrance to the city.

I was now inside the small community blacksmithing station that has been set up in this city and was trying to figure out what I could do with the new materials I had. I decided to use the Impure Orichalcum to upgrade my armor and use the dragon scales and talons I got from the actual dragon to make a shield worthy of kings.

My armor had not changed much in appearance but has changed in stats. It had much more defense now and was lighter. This was due to the fact that the old metal that had been infused with the cloth was now replaced with the Impure Orichalcum which was much harder and much lighter. The best thing is that it fused with the cloth so well you couldn't even tell there was metal in it. It just seemed like cloth.

My new shield consisted of a face of dragon scales that were harder than the hardest steel. They were an orange color but were not a super vibrant orange but instead a darker orange that was fitting of a dragon. The talons that I had gotten from the dragon were used to make the slot that your hand goes into to hold the shield when you are using it. The tips of the talons were also used to make spikes on the face of the shield so I could hit things with it to do damage and do damage when something hits it.

Finally, my last task was to try and upgrade my sword. I was not sure if this was going to succeed but I had to try. I activated the blacksmithing minigame and out my sword out in front of me on the anvil. I put the upgrade stone on top of it and started to hammer it into the sword. I was expecting some kind of error saying that I couldn't do this with a unique item but it seemed to work. I wondered what it would do since the sword gets progressively better from killing enemies.

After completing the number of hammer strokes I needed to do the minigame finished and I was rewarded with an upgraded version of the sword. After looking at the stats, the only thing that seemed to change was the weight. It was now weighted 150 instead of 100. It also seemed to be balanced better and seemed more natural in my hand even though it already seemed very natural before.

After finishing all the things that I needed to do at the blacksmithing station I headed to an inn that I could stay at for the next few days. On the way there I overheard something about a Supersonic swordsman who had saved a young girl from being mugged. I frowned to myself hoping that no one would figure out that I had a unique skill like that because if they did find out, who knows what they would do out of jealousy.

I entered the inn and went up to the front desk to rent a room for the night.

During the middle of the night, my consciousness slowly came back to me. Yet I was still asleep. I wondered what was going on and started to try to figure out what was going on. That was when I figured out what was going on. I was in a dark space inside my subconsciousness and in front of me was a special message.

"SAO: Update 1 Downloading…"


	15. Chapter 15: The Update

Chapter 15:

I awoke from my sleep and stretched my arms and legs out before getting out of bed. I remembered that in the middle of the night there had been an update. I bet there would be some sort of changelog. I checked my inventory, in search of something of the sort.

As soon as I opened my inventory a notification popped up notifying me of a system update. Underneath the notification, it had the changes of the update. There were two different sections in the log. One for major changes and one for minor changes. I first read the section of the major changes and was surprised at what I had found. The first thing that I saw was a big section titled Leveling overhaul. In the description of the change, it stated that it had changed the leveling system to be more balanced. It said that our current levels would be transferred to the new leveling system and we would be where we would be if the game started with this new leveling system.

It did not say what was different leveling system was, but I assumed that it was to increase the difficulty of leveling up. After all, he wouldn't want to make it too easy for people to over level in his death game.

There were a couple of other big changes but none of them seemed to concern me too much. There was a bunch of new items added to the game, and a couple of changes in certain skills but not much of anything else.

I looked in the second category labeled, "Minor Changes." The first change was an added feature called "Power Level" It was just a simple inventory feature that told you your total power rating after taking into account both your stats and your equipment. Another thing was that it said that you can no longer infinitely shoot pebbles. I wonder what that's all about. Another thing was that it said that it had a new option called vanity. This allowed players too equip and have the effects of certain armor but have another armor set as a vanity set, or what appears on them. Of course, there were some limitations. For example, you couldn't put on a bikini (If they even have them) as vanity but then be wearing a set of full heavy-duty armor. The equipment would have to be relatively similar in basic size and weight. There didn't seem to be anything else of interest so I closed the notification.

After closing the notification, I decided to check my stats. My level had changed quite significantly as I am only level 8 now compared to my previous level of around thirty. I wonder what other players think of this. I didn't seem to feel any different in stats even though my stats were lower. I guess the effect stats have has been increased since before. Next, I checked my power level and it said I had a power level of 74.

After checking a couple more things, I decided that I would spend this day out in the field to see how the update has changed the gameplay. I also wanted to try out my unique skill a bit more.

I stood up and got ready for the day. I walked out of the inn I was staying at and headed out into one of the more secluded places in the forest. Once I reached the spot I wanted to fight in, I waited around for a bit, for the first monster to appear. The minute I saw it. I activated my unique skill and appeared beside it. I cut its head off and speeded to the next one, which I saw out of the corner of my eye. Appearing in front of it I sliced up chopping the middle of its face. I was able to do this to one more before my skill wore off. The monster, which I was too busy killing to pay attention to what it was, burst into shards of light around me. I looked at my gains from killing it and saw that I got minuscule levels of EXP from it. "Wow," I thought. "It really is harder to level up now."

I started running into the forest once more and for one of the few times in this game was actually having fun, just playing the game as it was meant to be played before we knew it was a death game. I dashed between enemies and slashed at them, killing countless enemies over the next hour or so. I looked at my exp meter and saw that it barely went up at all. I figured that It would take much more to level up now.

I continued my rampage through the forest, smiling at the fun I was having, fighting all the enemies. Before I knew it I had traveled all the way up one of the higher mountains on the floor. I came to a plateau on the mountainside that overlooked the entire floor. Running up to the edge, I looked out over the floor. It was a magnificent view. It overlooked the entire forest with towering mountains on the right side of where I was facing and vast forests to my left. In front of the plateau, I was on was a waterfall that cascaded down the mountainside. The sunlight coming from the virtual sun peered from its place on the horizon. The view truly did take my breath away and for once, I almost forgot I was in a virtual world. I just felt like I was truly a part of this fantasy world. Even if it was a death game, it seemed so real. Even so, It would be even better if I was able to see a view like this in the real world. Thus a new reason to get out of this game arose in me. I wanted to go back to the real world and see something truly beautiful. Just like this.

With this idea, I had a newfound reason to try even harder at this game than I already had. I would get back. I would get back to the real world to go and see a view like this with my brother. I would show him what wonders the world has to offer.

I took my stare off the view in front of me and continued to travel throughout the forest. For the rest of the day, I ran with glee through the forest fighting to my heart's content.

Eventually, I had to go back to the town so I could go and sleep so I started back to the giant tree town.

\--A couple of days later--

A couple of days had passed since the update and most of us had gotten used to the new system that was introduced. In that time, someone had found the floor boss's lair while trying out the update's new features. Currently, we were heading towards the boss lair to try and take it on and hopefully beat it. We had already had a strategy meeting for it and it seemed that we probably would not have a hard time beating it. We hoped that we would have no casualties so we made our plan with safety being the highest priority.

On the way to the boss room, I saw kirito and Asuna again and meant to speak with them but wasn't able to because of the 50 or so people between us.

Eventually, we made it to the boss room and after a small pep talk, we opened the doors to the boss room and flooded inside the cavern. Nothing that interesting happened in the battle. This time, I was one of the frontal assaulters on the boss so I was one of the people that got to deal much of the damage. It lasted a little bit less than an hour and again, kirito got the last attack bonus. After the battle, we got our rewards and I leveled up for the first time in the new update. I got a few items but they weren't that special.

Thankfully I didn't have to use my new special ability which was beneficial for me because I didn't want other people to know about it yet. After going through the boss rewards, We headed up to the new boss room and since kirito was the one to get the last hit on the boss, he got to open the doors to the next floor. With newfound light flooding into the room, the doors opened to reveal a whole new floor for us to enjoy.

**AN: Sorry for the shorter chapter, might seem a bit bland but I just wanted to change the leveling system because I felt like I was leveling the characters up too fast. Thanks for reading though.**


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